


Pizza is better in a Party

by karakael



Category: GaoGaiGar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9477035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karakael/pseuds/karakael
Summary: When Soldato J chooses to retake the mantle of Pizza he expects to regret his decision. Fortunately for him, his team refuses to abandon him.





	

“It would be easy enough if we just had a Z-Crystal.” He says, and the whole bridge crew _looks_ at him.

Years later he will remember that moment, remembering the words falling idly out of his mouth, and wonder if he deserved what happened after. If he deserved what he became, because he offered himself so willingly to the knife.

Wonder if some part of him secretly wanted it. The … The _monster_ he became. 

But at the time there hadn’t seemed to be any other option. A whole world was going to power a terrifying machine, and all their weapons had done nothing. But a Machine King could simply walk inside its body and take control. Soldato J-002 could do nothing, but if Pizza of the Zondarians asked the world-machine would eat the sun for him.

Which is exactly what the machine did shortly thereafter, throwing itself at the far-superior power-source and self-immolating. The people were saved, the world was saved, everyone was happy. 

But he was lost. Soldato J died the moment he took the crystal, never-mind that this time he took it willingly. His only salvation was a million light-years away, and he would not risk all of 3G just to save himself. Anyways, Pizza was a far better weapon even than J, so at least he was a useful monster.

He hadn’t anticipated the reactions from his team, however. 

Renais and Tomoro had been in charge of the relief effort with the other mecha. When the population of the world was released their job went into overdrive, so it took two weeks after his transformation before they returned.

He had expected anger. He hadn’t expected silence.

But now, as a Zondarian, he could feel dark emotions, and as Renais stepped from the catwalk onto the _Amaratsu_ he felt her rage like a blow. His body reacted instinctively, reveling in the waves of rage that pulsed around her, even as he kept his face carefully neutral while Guy stepped forward to explain. 

The Evolver didn’t need to say anything, though. Tomoro had known the instant his connection with the J-Arc had been severed, and the AI had probably felt it even half a system away. 

Renais shouldn’t have felt anything. Their connection wasn’t as strong, and as a G-Stone Cyborg she was his natural enemy. By all rights she should hate him now, and so the anger felt appropriate. 

The redhead dodged around Guy easily, shifting her shoulder and barely pausing her stride towards J - no, Pizza now, only coming to a halt before her former partner. She stopped before him and looked up, eyes hooded and mouth tight with anger. The small shred of J that remained winced at her expression, but Pizza bathed in her hatred. So much power before him, all for the taking. But what was left of his mind recoiled at the thought, and over the long silence that part became stronger, shame taking the place of defensiveness and the frigid silence making even his mechanical body shiver.

The look lasted long, too long, enough so the other crew members kept trying to penetrate it with explanations or apologies.

“It was the only thing we could do.” Mikoto said.  
“J was a hero.” Guy swore.   
“He saved so many people.” said Swan.

Finally this prompted a reaction, and Renais turned her frozen face to the scientist.

“Those _people_ didn’t deserve him.”

Swan’s pretty face creased in confusion, and she turned to Taiga, baffled. Pizza heard with half an ear the questions thrown at Taiga and Renais, all asking for some kind of clarification, but he knew in an instant when the rage was no longer turned against him.

He knew what she meant, though the others did not. He hadn’t thought it necessary to mention why the machine had gone mad and begun collecting human batteries.

Of course, the spy would have found out eventually, even had she not been part of the relief efforts. 

“But only bad people are given to the machine.” 

That had been the law. It was hardly the machine’s fault it hadn’t understood. It had been hard, as Pizza, to push down his instincts and guide the machine into letting its food go. Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that Renais had come to the same dark conclusion Pizza had; that the government had deserved what happened to it. But the man who had once been a Soldato had not let that feeling escape, had buried it and siphoned its energy away. The monster of Pizza could be controlled.

Should have been controlled, but before him was one of the few people who had been able to shatter him as a man, to lead him into temptation and laughingly call it freedom. And she felt the same vicious rage and violent anger that the dark monster desired.

He turned away, intent upon getting away as fast as he could from the temptation, only to be pulled up short by her words.

“Why didn’t you wait for us?”

_“I don’t answer to you.”_

That was what he should have said, pulling his arrogance into a mask that would protect himself and drive her and Tomoro away.

But his control over this new form and its tendencies was weak, so instead he spoke the truth without thinking.

“I couldn’t.”

Her eyes widened and the shift in her emotions was so fast, so complete, that even he could not track it. One moment she was angry; angry at him, angry at 3G, angry at the world which didn’t deserve his sacrifice; the next he was on the ground, the sound of the slap ringing across the atrium and freezing every worker in the room.

Around him the emotions settled back into readability; sorrow from Guy and Mikoto, pity from Swan, resignation from Taiga and guilty relief from Liger.

None of them understood why he smiled through the pain. But despite all his fear for the future, in that instant he knew things would be alright. 

For through the anger - anger that she had every right to have, anger that he fully deserved - he felt an emotion that a creature like a Zondarian was never supposed to feel. 

Human emotions were anything but simple. That was why so many of the Zonders PI-01 had sent upon the Earth were so weak; few humans could fully devote themselves to on emotion. Those who could, like Guy, were rare and inevitably great heroes. But for most, the core of even the darkest emotion was kinder. That was what Mamoru had so effortlessly exploited to purify even the cruelest human. So many dark emotions were built on noble foundations; the need to protect, the hope for friendship, the desire to help…

And, of course, love. 

“How dare you leave us?” Her eyes spoke for her. “How dare you go and do this without asking the ones who care for you?”

And the answer was so obvious that she knew it before he opened his mouth.

“I couldn’t.”

Because they would have followed him. Without thought, without hesitation, Renais and Tomoro would have joined him in becoming Zonders, if just so he would not be alone. And that was why he couldn’t have asked them. 

But he was a fool if he thought they would allow him to live in this darkness alone. So he took the hand she offered him, even if he could stand on his own, and returned to his Arc, where Tomoro had already set aside new rooms for him. 

\---------

Tomoro, the innocent reflection of the Machine King Pinchernone, had plumbed the raw wound of his memories and made a space within himself that Pizza could call home, opening up a yawning cavern filled with discarded machinery and shunted away from the blinding light of the rest of the Arc. A nest where Pizza could retreat away from the world and take the time to figure out who he was. Something familiar, comforting, in a world that had suddenly become raw and empty.

He could no longer feel the Arc. He could no longer reach out and speak to Tomoro with his mind. He could no longer touch Renais.

Before then J - Pizza now - had never considered anything the Primevals had done to be kind. But shutting the Machine Kings’ memories away had been a perverse gift to their servants. As a Machine King, Pizza had been tormented by the flashes of memories he had of J’s defeat and the fall of the Red Planet. But those had been rare, barely remembered, only surfacing when Pasdur’s control faltered. As J the pain from his regained memories had served as fuel for his J-Jewel, as had the guilt from his memories of Pizza. It had taken six months of forced isolation under the Sol Masters to come to terms with his dual past, six months to synthesize his memories into an identity that remained true to his heritage and history and the values that had stayed with him no matter the form.

But now...now he had given all that up knowingly, abandoning everything he had become to win a single battle. Did he regret his actions? His emotions churned in a way that neither a Zonder Crystal nor his J-Jewel would have been able to parse into power. His memories tormented him, reminding him every instant of what he had lost. And the guilt of his actions ate at him, reminding him that he had chosen this.

“God, are you still wallowing?”

Tomoro had been almost too understanding, leaving the new Pizza alone to relearn his powers and force his emotions back into a semblance of composure. Assembling machinery had been easy, assimilating it simple, but no matter what he did he could not push dark emotions into easy power, relieving himself of the ugly tension that had defined his final moments as Pizza the first time, and now plagued his every waking moment. He remembered the singular focus both Pizza and J had shared, remembered how first the desperate yearning for the freedom of flight then guilt and horror desire for revenge had simplified his world down to singular tasks...but nothing he did now could return his mind to order.

And within all that chaos, Renais wouldn’t. leave. him. alone.

“Go away.” 

“Nope. You’re needed on the bridge.”

“What could I possibly - “ He stopped, finally having looked up from his brooding to glare at his former partner.

Only to see, for an instant, a Primada poised on one of his threads, balancing like a dancer.

He blinked, and Renais was there, newly modified hair hanging to her waist, sneering at him just like Primada had always done.

When she followed his eyes to the way her feet lightly balanced in a perfect _croise_ she laughed.

“Four years of ballet, _mon ami_ , should allow me to walk around your death-trap, _oui_?” And she proved her point by scampering, easily, across his threads, hands stretched like a gymnast, pose that of a prima ballerina, determination completely her own.

When she reached him she didn’t hesitate, merely fisting the fabric of his shirt - more him than fabric, not that she apparently cared - and then yanking them both out into open air without warning. She landed without difficulty, but he squawked and had to flap hard to prevent himself from falling flat on his face and ruining what dignity he had left.

“Right. As I said, the Captain is needed on the bridge.” He barely had time to land before she was pulling him forward, towards the ground-level entrance to the converted loading bay.

“I’m not…”

“Do I see any other Soldato’s around?” He realized that her sneer really wasn’t similar to Primada’s at all. Hers was so incredibly french, in a way that no former Red Planeter could have ever managed. “Non? Then - “ 

“I’m no Soldato.”

That stopped her short, and she rounded on him, tugging him until his helm and was level with her face.

“Really? Which is more you, Pizza or J?”

The question was a slap in the face, and had any other member of 3G been there they would have screamed at her for going against every possible psychologist's recommendation. Did she want to remind him of everything he had lost? Did she want him to return to the half-sentient Pizza, repressing his memories out of anguish? Did she think anyone could be safe around the barely sentient monster he could become?

“I’m...I’m Pizza now.” Even to his ears, he heard the uncertainty in his voice, and somewhere within him there was a flash of the pride that he had carried through every transformation that screamed at him for such weakness. J or Pizza, he was still above allowing uncertainty hinder his actions.

He stood straighter, ready to voice his conviction … and despite his helm and frozen expression Renais saw something that made her smile, and she spoke for him.

“Fine, then. P-J is is.”

It took him four years to realize the name was a joke, and by then the idea had caught on, everyone at 3G referring to him by the initials, switched depending on which set of skills they needed.

PJ became JP became PJ again, as the former Soldato found that he could still claim some skills that his organic form had possessed. Some things were gone for good: his ability to fuse with the J-Arc, the Hyper-Mode that had allowed him to synchronize with Renais, but worst of all the ability to bottle his thoughts inside. As a Zonder, Pizza could feed off of emotions, his own and others, but he could no longer be aloof from them. The wall he had built around himself following his purification was shattered, and now he had to deal with his fears and insecurities, plus the guilt and regret that came from being an independent actor conscious of the horror Pizza had caused.

But Tomoro and Renais still treated him as their commander, and he found himself once again in control of the J-Arc, never mind that he no longer held the ability to Fuse. His first day back to the bridge, he found Tomoro had dimmed the light from the J-Jewel, enough that he could freely stand even beneath the burning symbol of who he once was. Renais had re-wired the weapon controls to a new console, powered by Arma’s throne, that allowed her to manually control the weapons arrays as J had once done with a thought. Silently, she and Tomoro and some of the 3G techs had prepared to install other stations, should his verbal commands not be enough, but the Arc itself seemed perversely eager to please, and through Tomoro and Renais answered his commands seamlessly.

They gave him back command of the stars, and JP - or PJ, depending on the day - would never be able to articulate how much that act alone had saved him.

It wasn’t until years later that he realized it had been more than just a practical act, 3G refusing to give up any skill set they had within their hands, and one of genuine fealty from the Arc, Tomoro and Renais. Had he discovered their deception at any time other than during a steeply stacked battle, he would have been furious (Renais was furious as well; she had a bottle of rather good _Cabernet Sauvignon_ riding on how long PJ would sulk.)

Instead, as Pizza found himself trapped far behind enemy lines, caught between a hail of fire and a self-destruct sequence running through his stolen cruiser, certain that no one could reach him in time and almost resigned to his fate...

A white robot appeared, ripping apart the enemy fleet with ease, spinning in space - a bit clumsily, it was true - but nonetheless beautiful in the carnage it created. There was heavy irony in the flagship of the Trinary System coming to the aid of a Zondarian, and PJ found the time to laugh as the ship that had once been his whole world violently ripped him from the wreckage then tenderly protected him from the resulting blast.

The Arc would never again dance with the grace of a Soldato at its helm, but Renais was an eager student and Tomoro made up for the instincts she lacked, and PJ found himself flying easier knowing that they all held his back.

Eventually her instruction branched out to including other cadets of the 3G programs, young pilots from all across the stars, as 3G finally began to live up to its name as a _Galaxy_ Guard. And JP found that even a Zondarian could learn a new set of skills; that of a teacher and mentor. He wasn't the only one who came to the _Guard_ with a troubled past, and for those who could not find another place, or who were willing to put up with his harsh criticism and unusual habits, Commander J-Pizza became the best instructor they ever had. All the skills and tactics he had learned as Pizza were just as useful as the memories he held from J, and being able to use them to prevent the kind of planetary invasions that the Primevals had specialized in eased much of the guilt he felt for his actions. His students had never known him as anything but JP - the best pilot in the galaxy - and that eased the pain as well. He might never his ship again, but he gave the stars to a whole new generation, and that was something he was genuinely proud of.

\-------------

It wasn’t until years later that he realized he should have been burned by the Arc’s rescue, that first time. Flaring G-Stone energy had killed many of his Zondarian comrades, so there was no reason why the explosion of J and G-Stone energy produced when Tomoro and Renais fused with the Arc would do anything less. 

And in the early days it had hurt. Sparing with Guy had left him slow-healing scars even from the briefest hits from the Will Knife, and any attempt at fusion would have erased him from existence. Yet the J Energy from the Arc hurt no more than the persistent heat of a sun, and as his feathers molted fell he stopped noticing the pain. If he was honest, he enjoyed the burn, the reminder of what he had once been and who he had become. He would have been horrified to realize that eventually he became used to it all, and had become comfortable with the change, had the resulting immunization not saved him so often. But it allowed him to walk the halls of the J-Arc without fear, no matter the energy output, and to come to the aid of even the most damaged of G-Powered ships with only minimal damage, so he simply let it be.

As for Renais...well, she never allowed him to isolate himself from her energy signature. She was always a presence, always a moment away, just as the Arc had once only been separated by a thought. In the early days her presence burned with her anger, leaving blisters both when he touched her as a Zondarian and as a human. But even as he learned to savor the pain, it faded, leaving Guy questioning how a mere hug could send Pizza jerking backwards, yet on any given evening guests could find Pizza wrapped tight around his friend, watching the stars and basking in her heat, cocooned away from the world.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. No need for courage.” Renais would always answer. “It's not like he’s any different.”

Which always confused PJ. Everything about him felt different, yet she seemed to find his transformation nothing more than a switch of title and a marginally different skill-set. Plus, there were certain advantages to a fully human form that outweighed the risk of occasional burns.

But he never considered that his crew, and his posting with 3G, could have a lasting effect, until a good ten years after he returned to his Pizza form.

They had been going through old files, jumbled from an EMP strike, when Renais crowded and held up an old file. 

“Oh, that’s interesting.”

PJ glanced from his scanning the stars to Renais, who was grinning.

“What is?” He humored her, only listening with half an ear. There had been rumors of bandit activity in this sector, and he was half hoping to test his new form against the threat. The asteroid field would test even his maneuverability and the apparently pilot-less J-Arc would be a tempting target. 

“I found an old photo of you.”

All thoughts of battle fled from his mind.

“I thought I instructed Tomoro to delete all of those.”

He didn’t catch Renais expression as she looked over the rims of her glasses at him. He had turned away, fighting to keep his shame in check, bleeding the dark emotions of envy and loss into his power-source. 

“This one is from old medical records. I’m not surprised Tomoro missed it. But it's interesting, nonetheless.”

“For you, perhaps, but I need no memory of what is now lost to me.”

“But that’s just it. You don’t look any different.”

And then the photo was in front of him, before his eyes faster than he could turn away. 

In it was the soldier he once had been. Tall, proud, green armor glinting in the sunlight and scarf flaring behind him. Fresh from a battle, surely. Arrogant smile on his face and eyes hidden behind an unbroken helm. Everything he yearned to be, everything he had willingly given up for the greater good. The sight ripped a hole where his heart should be.

“No, you idiot. _Look_.”

A mirror was thrust in front of his face, and he started. He hadn't realized how much his armor had shifted from Pizza's costume. It had been slow - adding armor to the chest-piece, then replacing the cape, then adding the layered pauldrons and grieves. And on and on. Each step had made sense individually, adapting to new enemies and new weapons, and yet...

And yet the result was so similar to the armor he had worn so proudly as a Soldato. The man who wore it was different, face lined and armor nicked, but his form was not so different than the one he had tried so hard to forget. Time would have taken its tole on the man in the picture just as well, lining his face and nicking armor, leaving behind scars and faded colors. Green to grey, Black to blue, and what had once been so simple had bled into a more complex whole. 

The boy who stared out from the past could have been a twin. Or a son. Or...him.

He looked up, and found Renais grinning, as if he had finally realized something she had known for years.

"Pizza or J, its always been you on the inside. Guess now the outside finally fits."


End file.
